


Fixed Points

by mountain_born



Series: The Marvelous Tale of an Agent, an Archer, and an Assassin [6]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Doctor Who/Avengers Crossover Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-21
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-11-30 00:31:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/693289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountain_born/pseuds/mountain_born
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some experiences leave a mark.  Some of those marks are easier to read than others.  Assuming, of course, you can find them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fixed Points

**Author's Note:**

> Beta-ing kudos go out to **like_a_raven**! At this rate, I'm going to owe her my first-born. Or at least lunch.

_August 2006_

Integrating River into their team took some adjusting for Coulson and Clint. Not in the big ways, not out on the job. The transition to working together on missions was actually a surprisingly smooth process. It tended to be the mundane components of teamwork that tripped them up a bit in the beginning, like working out of safe houses. 

SHIELD safe houses could run the gamut in size and appointment, but most of them weren’t large because it was just that much more space to be secured. Furthermore, a lot of that space was given over to the sheer number of supplies that agents might need in the field: food, medical gear, weapons and ammunition, communications equipment, tools. So even in larger safe houses, quarters could be rather cramped. Privacy was often in short supply and circumstances could mean that modesty went out the window entirely.

When he’d been working with just Clint, Coulson had never thought anything of it. As far as he knew, neither had Clint. Coulson had gone to a military college where he’d never had fewer than three roommates. Clint had spent several years living out of carnival vans and campers. They’d both served stints in the Army. Those weren’t situations that tended to result in shyness about things like changing clothes in communal areas. 

Throwing River into the mix brought them both up a little short. Neither of them was particularly comfortable stripping down in front of a nineteen-year-old girl.

River was way less concerned about the whole situation than they were.

“You know, I appreciate you boys trying to preserve my non-existent delicate sensibilities,” River said as she and Coulson attempted to maneuver around each other in a cramped kitchen in a safe house in Italy. “I do,” she added seriously when Coulson looked over at her. “But you really don’t need to get weird about it. Just do whatever you normally do.”

The safe house on the outskirts of Rome made the one in Sofia look spacious and roomy. On paper it had a bunk room, but that space seemed to be serving more as storage and use as a staging area. Instead, three cots had been crammed into the main room, which was separated from the kitchen by low bookcases crammed with operation manuals and canned goods.

Phil and River had drawn KP duty and the two of them were trying to throw together dinner from the canned and boxed groceries that the safe house had been stocked with. If they got pinned down here without an easy extraction, Coulson estimated that they could survive for three weeks on the pasta and beans alone. Clint was at the table with a map of the area, noting good possible vantage points with a thin red marker, the cap clenched in his teeth. 

“We’re not being weird,” Coulson said, draining a pot over the sink. “There’s just a certain level of appropriateness that we probably ought to preserve when we can.” 

Because, just given the curve balls that could come on missions, there would be occasions where they couldn’t.  


“And appropriateness is all well and good when it’s practical,” River said, echoing his thought. She took three plates out of a cabinet and raised an eyebrow at Clint until he obediently slid the map over so that she could set the stack on the table. “I’m just saying that neither one of you has anything I haven’t seen before.”

“Verging on too much information, Song.” Coulson dumped the pasta straight into the sauce pot and mixed it together.

River smiled wryly at him as she opened the cutlery drawer. “I thought there was no such thing as ‘too much information’ in your book.”

“Careful, River. You’ll make him blush.” Clint rolled up his map and laid it on top of the small refrigerator. He took the pot from Coulson and started spooning food onto the plates. “And you’re wrong about that, by the way. There’s stuff you haven’t seen.”

“Oh, really?” The _don’t flatter yourself_ was clearly implied. River eyed him skeptically. “Do tell.”

“I bet you haven’t seen Phil’s ink yet,” Clint said, passing a plate to her.

River looked at Coulson who rolled his eyes as he sat down at the table. “Thank you, Clint,” he said.

“You?” River hitched herself up on an unoccupied square of kitchen counter, her plate in her lap. “You have a tattoo?”

Coulson gave her a tolerant look. “No,” he said. “I have four.”

River looked vaguely impressed. “Well, aren’t you full of surprises? But I thought SHIELD discouraged that for agents. Tattoos are too identifiable. You don’t have any, do you?” she asked Clint, who was eating standing up, leaning back against the stove.

“Nope,” he said. “Pure as the driven snow over here.”

River snorted.

“Okay, for one,” Coulson said, “I made sure when I got them that they weren’t anything highly visible. Second, I had them all before I joined SHIELD.”

“So, what are they?” River asked.

“I think I’m going to take a page from your book on the ‘idle curiosity’ front, kid,” Coulson replied.

“Come on, Coulson.”

Coulson complacently finished a bite of his dinner before he answered.

“I’ll tell you what, Song,” he said. “Extra credit project for you. This mission should take about four days, five tops. If you can tell me what and where my tattoos are by the time we go home, you’ll earn four days off. One day for every one you get right.”

“Four days?” River contemplated the offer. “And if I don’t find all four?”

“For every one you miss, you have to answer a question I ask you, fully and honestly.”

She poked her fork at her plate of pasta. “All right. What are the parameters?”

“The parameters are that you can’t ask Clint for help.” Coulson raised his eyebrows at Clint. “No giving her hints. No interfering.”

“No skin off my nose.” Clint looked highly amused by this whole byplay. “You guys can fight this one out on your own.”

“I take it you know what they are?” she asked Clint.

“Sure,” Clint said. He nodded at Coulson. “I had to patch him up from a nasty case of road rash on a mission pretty early on.”

“Ouch.” River winced. She turned her attention back to Coulson. “All right, then. That’s the only rule?”

“That’s the only one.”

At this point in their working relationship, Coulson was relatively confident that she wouldn’t just taze him and strip him naked.

Relatively.

“You’re on.”

*****

It took her under an hour to find the first one, which had been about what Coulson had expected. The one on his upper arm wasn’t exactly a challenge.

He was doing the dishes and the sleeve of his t-shirt rode up when he reached over to stick a plate in the drainer. River, never one to be shy about getting into someone else’s personal space for all that she worked to keep people out of her own, appeared at his elbow. She hooked a finger under the hem of his sleeve, pushed the material up, and nodded at what she found.

River had dug up a pad of post-it notes somewhere in the safe house. She made a note on one and stuck it to the door of the pantry.

_Army Insignia – Upper Right Bicep_

“That’s one,” River said.

Clint was lying on his cot, reading. He had popped his hearing aids out earlier to give his ears a rest, but he glanced up at the activity in the kitchen area. He gave River a brief thumbs up before going back to his book.

“That was the freebie,” Coulson said. “The other ones won’t be so easy.”

River settled down on her own cot while Coulson wiped off the kitchen table. “How long were you in the Army?” she asked.

“Three years.” Coulson draped the dishrag over the edge of the sink and sank down on the third cot. “I was ROTC in college and I accepted my commission right after I graduated. I was in Saudi Arabia for the Gulf War. I got out in June of ’91.”

“When you joined SHIELD?”

“Yes,” Coulson confirmed with a nod. “I was actually recruited by Fury. That was before he was running the show, of course. He was working under Director Meg Downing at the time.”

Coulson’s recruitment hadn’t been anywhere near as colorful as River’s or even Clint’s, but even after all these years it he still boggled at it a bit when he thought about it. He had never even heard of SHIELD before Nick Fury turned up on his base one day with a job offer. 

Before the day had been out, Coulson had found himself sitting in Director Downing’s office for an interview. Downing had already been in her early seventies at the time, as hard as it had been for him to believe. She had been a member of the original five-person board that had founded and operated SHIELD in the years after World War II, and when the time had come when the organization had grown to needing a single head, she had been selected as its first director. Facing her across her desk, Coulson had seen why. Fury’s predecessor had been one hell of a formidable woman. Still was, as far as Coulson knew. She was in her late eighties now and still kicking, though she had retired four years after his recruitment.

She had greeted him with, “Phillip. So nice to meet you. I’ve heard good things.”

Coulson never had learned what exactly she’d heard, or from whom. He could only assume that one of his commanding officers had written something really good in his file. By the end of that day, with paperwork expedited in a way that he’d not though bureaucratically possible, Phil Coulson had found himself ex-Army and in training to be a SHIELD agent.

“Do you think you’ll ever leave?” River asked, folding her legs up comfortably. “Do something else?”

Clint, Coulson noticed, had reinserted his hearing aids and was listening to the conversation.

“God, no. Who’d keep an eye on the two of you?” Coulson shook his head. “No. I can’t imagine ever leaving SHIELD.”

River smiled in a way he couldn’t quite assign an emotion to. “You’re a believer, huh? In for life?”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

She thought a moment, then shrugged. “So long as you can keep believing? No. I suppose it’s not.”

“Then I have nothing to worry about.” Coulson levered himself up off of his cot far enough to hit the switch for the overhead lights. The lamps still left plenty of light for Clint and River to see and read by. Coulson shook out the blanket at the foot of his cot.

“I’m going to get some sleep. We have work to do tomorrow.”

“And I have a bet to win.”

Coulson just smiled.

*****

When River went to shower, Clint set his book aside and sat up.

“You know she’s going to win this bet, right?” he said to Coulson. “She’s going to find all of them, one way or the other.”

Coulson’s eyes were closed, his hands laced across his stomach, but Clint knew good and well that he wasn’t actually asleep, yet.

“Yeah, I know,” Coulson replied.

“So why make the bet?” Clint asked.

“I’m curious to see which ways she’ll actually use.”

Clint raised his eyebrows at his handler, even though Coulson couldn’t see him.

“So, this is yet another scenario designed to see if you can figure out what makes her tick?”

“You could say that,” Coulson said.

“So…you’re crazy.”

“It’s been said.”

 _Yeah. Usually in reference to the agents you decide to take on and how you deal with them._ Clint shook his head with a half smile.

“As long as you know what you’re getting into,” Clint said.

“Oh, I think I have a good enough idea.”

*****

Clint really didn’t know what sort of useful intelligence Coulson thought he was going to get out of what River did to win this bet. Still, as far as he was concerned, the only downside to the whole thing was that he didn’t have access to popcorn to eat while he watched it play out.

The Army tattoo had been the easy one, as Coulson had said. Clint knew that River would have to work a little harder to find the others. And he had been ordered not to interfere, so he didn’t say a word the next morning when he saw River mentally calculating a strategy while Coulson gathered up clean clothes and went to shower.

River waited until the water had been running for a few minutes, then got up and picked up a pen and the pad of post-its. She calmly and silently opened the bathroom door just enough for a plume of steam to escape and for her to slip inside. All was quiet for a moment before…

“ _GOD_ dammit, Song!” Coulson yelled. “Get out of here!”

 _Christ_ , Clint thought. Laughing that hard really made his ribs hurt.

River calmly walked out of the bathroom, writing on the pad of post-its, pausing for a second to pull the door closed behind her. 

“He can jump pretty high for an older guy,” she said, sticking the second note up on the pantry door beside the first.

_Captain America Shield – Upper Right Thigh._

“So. Captain America, huh?” she said conversationally when Coulson came marching out of the bathroom a few minutes later.

“We need to have a serious talk about appropriate boundaries,” Coulson said, accepting the cup of coffee Clint passed him. The glare that Coulson gave him as thanks told Clint that he was less than successful at keeping his face straight.

River, thoroughly unruffled, glanced up from her mission brief. “The clause _you can’t stick your head in my shower_ was never part of the parameters of the bet. You’re a Captain America fan?”

Coulson looked vaguely like he was going to explode. Clint took a hasty drink of his own coffee to cover up his grin. As safe house entertainment went, this beat darts or solitaire any day.

“Yes,” Coulson replied.

“I have a hard time picturing you reading comic books, somehow.”

“Yeah, well.” Coulson pulled a chair out from the table and took the seat across from her. “Captain America was about a lot more than comic books.”

Clint settled back against the kitchen counter, getting comfortable. He’d heard this speech before.

“At your age, you might not know it, but Captain America actually was a real person,” Coulson said. “He wasn’t just a comic book character.”

River nodded, still reading her brief.

“American World War II propaganda,” she said. “He was supposedly some sort of real-life super soldier, even though he spent about half of his career selling war bonds. He appeared in a several short films as well as being a popular comic book character.” River put down her brief. “And then he either started believing his own press or there actually was some truth to those super soldier rumors because he started fighting the Nazis for real and, by all accounts, disappeared on a mission in 1944.”

Clint raised his eyebrows slightly in surprise and glanced at Coulson. His handler seemed to be torn between _Why the fuck do you know that?_ and deflating a bit in disappointment. He’d been gearing up for the history lesson.

“Okay,” Coulson said. “So, you’re not a complete heathen. Yes, he was more than a comic book hero. And there was no ‘supposedly’ about the ‘super soldier.’ The unit that oversaw that program was actually one of the forerunners of SHIELD.” Coulson took a sip of his coffee. “Also, for the record, I did read the comics. My dad had his old ones from the forties. Don’t assume, Song.”

River held up her hands in a _fair enough_ gesture. “And the tattoo?”

“I was eighteen. ”

“Words that explain so much,” River said. 

“Said the nineteen-year-old,” Clint interjected.

River just shrugged. “So. That’s two down, two to go. Do I get to pick my days off or are you going to assign them? Can I take all four as a clump?”

Coulson rolled his eyes. “Don’t get cocky, Song. You haven’t found all four of them yet.”

River and Clint exchanged an amused look, but Clint knew that it would be more difficult from here.

And Coulson would know to barricade the bathroom door, now.

*****

The next morning, Coulson was the first one up.

From his cot, he could see that Clint and River were both still asleep. Coulson would know that the two younger people were field operatives just by the way they slept. Clint was sprawled on his back, head turned toward the open room. River was on her side, back to the wall. Both kept their arms well free of the blankets which could entangle them or slow them down if they had to get up in a hurry.

Both of them slept lightly, though Coulson knew that his moving around in the safe house wouldn’t be enough to wake them. Clint, by now, didn’t register Coulson’s presence as a potential threat, and Song had stopped automatically waking up every single time one of them got up and moved around. Coulson wove his fingers together and stretched his arms upward before quietly getting up and wandering over to the kitchen to start the coffee. 

It wasn’t until he was partway through his first cup that he noticed that a third post-it note had appeared on the pantry door in the night.

_“You May Be Whatever You Resolve To Be” – Left Side Under Ribs_

Coulson stood gaping at it for a moment.

“What the hell…?”

“Is the coffee ready?” River asked, coming into the kitchen, yawning. 

Coulson pointed to the post-it note. “Explain this.”

“I’m afraid I can’t. It’s your tattoo.”

“I mean when did you find it?” Because it sure as hell hadn’t been before he’d gone to sleep last night.

Clint wandered into the kitchen, taking two mugs from the drainer and handing one to River. River took the mug and picked up the coffee pot, pouring herself a cup.

“Last night,” she said unconcernedly. She filled the mug that Clint was holding out to her. “You were asleep.”

Coulson glared at her. “I’m never _that_ asleep.”

River shrugged, hitching herself up onto the section of kitchen counter that she’d appropriated as her seat. She took a drink of her coffee and made her patented _it’s not tea but it will do_ face. “Being stealthy is one of the things you pay me for.”

Clint made a vaguely strangled sound and quickly turned his back on the two of them, going for the carton of sugar.

“So, what does it mean?” River asked. “It’s a quote, yeah?”

Coulson caved to the reality that Song had apparently been poking about his person while he was asleep and topped off his own mug of coffee.

“Yes, it’s a quote. It was my college’s motto, or might as well have been.”

“What college?”

“VMI. Virginia Military Institute.”

River raised her eyebrows. “Well, you committed to the service early, didn’t you?”

“Commission wasn’t required. I didn’t actually go in expecting to join the Army.” Coulson held his mug out so that Clint could dump a spoonful of sugar into it. He needed the extra boost this morning. “My mother wanted me to be a lawyer. Or an accountant.”

“Something where spies weren’t frisking you in the middle of the night?” Clint asked.

“Precisely.”

Coulson watched Clint and River exchange half-smothered grins. 

“All right, you two,” he said, pulling out a chair at the table. “We have a lot to do today. Let’s go over these maps and make sure we have our routes in and out down.”

*****

The mission went beautifully.

Even Fury had expressed some concern about it before they had left, and had told Coulson to pull out if it looked like the mark was getting even remotely wise to them. But there had been no need. They had gotten the intel they needed and then some and their mark never so much as suspected that they were there.

It called for a celebration of sorts.

Clint, Coulson and River wound up in a _ristorante_ a few blocks away from their safe house, still riding the high from the success of the operation. Their jubilant mood seemed to infect everyone in the place, including their waitress. Coulson asked (in his rudimentary Italian) what River was sure he thought was an innocent question regarding the dessert menu. The woman broke into good-natured laughter and gave him a hearty kiss on the cheek, leaving a Valentine-perfect red lipstick print.

Much to the delight of Clint and River.

“It’s never going to come off,” River said as they walked back to their safe house. 

It was late and all three of them had had enough wine to be loosely relaxed, but not so much that guards were dropped. River was out in front of the trio, walking backward to better give her handler a hard time.

“You are going to be marked with Roman Red for life,” she continued, grinning. “And when people ask, ‘What’s that on Coulson’s face?’ we’ll tell them--”

River was cut off mid-mock by a sight that made her heart stop for a second.

It wasn’t a hostile threat; just some dumb teenage kid on a scooter going too fast and not paying attention to his surroundings. Clint, Coulson and River had just crossed a narrow side street and Coulson had paused on the corner to scrub his hand against his cheek again, trying to get the lipstick off. Clint was a few steps ahead of him.

The kid on the scooter clipped Coulson, knocking the man over and sending him skidding head-first down the low embankment into the ditch. The kid didn’t even slow down, which if nothing else demonstrated that he had a few self-preservation instincts going for him.

Clint seemed to register the look on River’s face a split second before he processed what had just happened behind him, then he was skidding down into the ditch after Coulson. River was torn for a moment between going after the kid and going to help Coulson as well, but ultimately followed Clint.

Coulson was already climbing to his feet, wincing and looking disgusted.

“I’m fine. I’m okay. I’m fine,” he said to them, brushing himself off. “Damn kid. I’m fine. I can walk.”

Coulson hadn’t come close to being badly hurt, but the bank of the ditch had been littered with broken glass and other debris. His hands had taken a few good hits and blood had soaked through his shirt in a couple of places by the time they got back to the safe house. 

Coulson made some noises about jumping in the shower and then finding a box of band-aids. Clint told him to sit the hell down and went to get the first aid kit. While her partner was in the store room, River sat Coulson down in one of the kitchen chairs, helped him ease out of his shirt, and pressed a folded pad of paper towels to a deep gouge in his chest.

“This one’s probably going to need a couple of stitches,” she warned him, eyeing the cut once some of the blood had been blotted away.

Coulson nodded. “Clint can do it,” he said.

River cocked her head slightly, noticing something else below the paper towels she was holding against the cut.

 _JRC EAC_. Six tiny letters in black ink tattooed in a row over his heart.

River glanced up to see Coulson watching her.

“My parents’ initials,” he said. “That’s four. Looks like you win all four days.”

River made a half-hearted face at him and looked over momentarily as Clint came back with the first aid kit, setting it on the table.

“I actually wasn’t thinking about the bet,” she said.

It was true. She hadn’t been. River took the antiseptic-soaked gauze that Clint handed to her. He went to start sterilizing a pair of tweezers and a needle. River set aside the paper towels and pressed the gauze to the cut instead. Coulson winced.

“What are their names?” River asked to distract him.

“James Richard and Emily Anne.”

“You don’t talk about them much.”

River had surmised some time ago that Coulson’s parents were gone. He talked about his other relatives freely enough, but when he mentioned his mother or father it was always like he was commenting on something from a distance.

“They’ve both been dead for a long time,” he said, nodding. “My dad died when I was fourteen. He worked at a rail yard in Pittsburgh. He was killed in an accident on the job. My mom died during my second year at VMI.”

Clint only seemed to be half paying attention to their conversation as he laid out the supplies he needed. Of course, River thought, he probably knew all of this already.

“Is that why you didn’t go back after you graduated? Is that why you joined the Army instead?”

“In part, maybe,” Coulson said. He frowned at a bloody scrape on his palm. “I _could_ have gone back. I had plenty of relatives who made it more than clear that I was welcome in any of their homes. I guess I just decided that I was suited to a military life.”

“Even though your mother wanted you to be a lawyer or an accountant?”

Coulson’s mouth turned up a little bit. “I think she mostly wanted me to be in a safe line of work.” River raised her eyebrows and Coulson, surprisingly, laughed. “Go figure.”

River smiled a bit and shook her head.

“Robert and Elizabeth,” she said after a moment.

“Robert and Elizabeth?” Coulson looked at her curiously.

“The people who raised me,” River said. “Foster parents, I suppose you could call them. Robert and Elizabeth MacDonald.” She looked Coulson in the eye. “And before you waste the next three weeks researching them, you won’t find anything.”

It wasn’t quite the truth. Robert and Elizabeth MacDonald had probably made it into the odd historical database somewhere, but it wouldn’t be anything that Coulson would think to connect to River. The timing would be far too off-kilter.

River could see Clint’s hands slow in prepping the suture kit, listening in.

“You won the bet,” Coulson said. “You don’t have to tell me anything.”

“I know,” River said. “And I’ll take those four days off. I’m just telling you.”

Coulson nodded.

River looked up as Clint moved to her elbow holding the tweezers, and edged out of his way so that he could start fishing debris out of the cut before putting in stitches. River set aside the gauze and tore open some antiseptic wipes, going to work cleaning up the mess the fall had made of Coulson’s hands. Between the two agents, it didn’t take long to get Coulson patched up to everyone’s satisfaction. Coulson, notorious for being the worst patient of the three of them, didn’t even grumble about it too much.

They were all still learning their way around each other, and as a team they weren’t seamless or perfect yet. But they were getting there.


End file.
